Ilan Goldenberg spends some time listening to some folks who have experience dealing with Iranian officials and with difficult negotiations, and it turns out that nobody thinks table-pounding threats to keep military force “on the table” are a useful negotiating tool. Weirdly, it turns out that these experts believe the Iranian government is capable of realizing that the U.S. could, in principle, drop bombs on Iran based on their ability to perceive objective reality. They also claim that leading with idle threats to launch wars makes you look unreasonable, and tends to poison the wells for productive talks.

Strange stuff — sounds like appeasement talk to me.

Via Chris Bowers, McCain’s top economic advisor says defense budget cuts could pay for endless tax cuts. Meanwhile, in Foreign Affairs McCain calls for increased defense spending to make his agenda of endless war feasible:

Along with more personnel, our military needs additional equipment in order to make up for its recent losses and modernize. We can partially offset some of this additional investment by cutting wasteful spending. But we can also afford to spend more on national defense, which currently consumes less than four cents of every dollar that our economy generates — far less than what we spent during the Cold War. We must also accelerate the transformation of our military, which is still configured to fight enemies that no longer exist.

So on the one hand, defense cuts will pay for tax cuts. But on the other hand, we need to substantial increase defense spending as a share of GDP to something more like Cold War levels.

Straight talk!

Madeleine Albright’s penned a not very enlightening op-ed bemoaning the return of sovereignty and the “death of intervention” in the wake of Iraq. Near the end she says:

The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.

At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?

I think that second paragraph would do well to take the previous paragraph more seriously. The issue at stake is much, much, much less a question of principle than it is a question of practice. I think it’s very easy to conclude that the abstract moral logic of sovereignty-over-all is grossly wrongheaded. But the real issue of how U.S. government policy should be impacted by moral universalism is a practical problem. In the wake of Iraq, few people around the world think “America is sovereign, and also can invade other countries whenever it wants to, but other countries can’t do that” is a viable governing principle for the world order. So insofar as people would like to see certain international norms enforced, actual work needs to be done to make that possible.

Meanwhile, it’s always worth resisting this impulse to identify humanitarianism with the cause of invasions. Being open to immigration and imported goods helps foreigners, costs us nothing, and tends to advance the cause of peace. Preserving good relations between the great powers has major humanitarian benefits as the post-cold war decline in global conflict continues apace. Programs to hand out mosquito nets help people. It’s a kind of madness to assume that military coercion is the be-all and end-all of human betterment.

I haven’t been following the situation in Zimbabwe super closely, but the fact that Desmond Tutu is weighing in and calling on Mugabe to step down seems noteworthy. Mugabe’s regime has clearly been getting a big boost over the years from loyalty that ANCers feel thanks to the help he gave them back when Mugabe’s western critics were mostly on the side of the apartheid government, so it means a lot as we see more and more of the key anti-apartheid leaders breaking with their old ally.

This is stunning stuff. Having convinced a swathe of the press that it was unfair of Democrats to accurately quote McCain as saying he had no problem with American troops being in Iraq for 100 years, he’s now back saying it’s “not too important” whether or not our troops ever leave Iraq:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems important to Iraqis:

“The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament’s foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “If we can’t reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, ‘Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don’t need you here anymore.’ “

And those are the friendly ones, opposition Iraqi politicians have even stronger feelings. Given Iraqi sentiment about this topic, McCain’s vision of a long-time but utterly peaceful presence since extremely difficult to realize. It’s just really, really, really hard to station your troops where they’re not wanted. Meanwhile, amidst his analogies to South Korea and Germany, McCain seems to be missing the part where he explains why making permanent bases our key war aim is a good idea. We maintained our garrison in West Germany because of the Warsaw Pact across the border and you can’t understand why our troops are in South Korea without thinking about North Korea.

But what are they going to be doing in Iraq? Fighting Iran? That seems like a recipe for ensuring that Iraq never becomes peaceful and stable, since if our goal in Iraq is to create a platform for anti-Iranian activities then the Iranians would seem to have no choice but to stir up as much trouble as possible.

The McCain campaign is evidently convinced that it can win a debate about Iraq policy, but the basis for their confidence remains elusive. Here’s a Democracy Corps analysis of 45 Republican-held but maybe winnable congressional districts:

More importantly, when forced to choose between Obama’s proposal for a responsible troop withdrawal and a shift of resources to the U.S. and McCain’s commitment to stay the course but have most troops out of Iraq by 2013, Democrats win the argument by double-digit margins. Engaging in the Iraq debate allows Democrats to reach out to independents and winnable voters well beyond their electoral support.

Given that this is a somewhat right-of-center set of districts, that’s very very bad news for McCain. Under the circumstances, insofar as McCain’s heavy recent focus on
Iraq reflects any kind of political strategy, it seems to me to be a kind of confidence game. Republicans are hoping Democrats will fear the issue and shift the conversation elsewhere. Then they’ll point to the shifting and say, “see! they’re afraid! they know they’re wrong!” And I do think that kind of dynamic might change some people’s minds. Whether or not it’s a good idea to put him on a national ticket, I do think a lot of Democrats running for office could stand to learn from Joe Biden’s confidence and recognize that there’s nothing to be afraid of.